A Generative Music Machine Reminiscent Of Childhood Token Rides
Remembering the days…
in Singapore where entertainment to me came in the form of my grandmother dropping 20 cents into a coin slot, a mechanical nudge and “its a small world after all, its a small, small world…”. Nursery rhymes innocent times, a minute later the plastic donkey would slow to a halt and the lullaby pitched down to a stop. “One more time Mama, please…” “No more money lah boy, time to go home…”
Fast forward…
twenty years continent transposed as well. The boy grows up to rebel, then to adapt, to reject, then to adhere, to avoid then to exploit the medias that are considered “New” today. Using nothing more than Pure Data, this boy sets up his trusty Monome to reflect the qualities exuded from his childhood muse, a modern toy built for entertaining the modern boy. Rather than Its A Small World, the Magic Minute Machine generates music based on stochastic compositional algorithms. And the plastic donkey and mechanics to run it has been exchanged for a minimalist approved Monome 64 LED box. The coin slot? Well, this boy fell into the open-source trap and chose free entertainment for the masses (Monome not included of course).
Interaction with this machine is as simple as pressing any one of the four lit LEDs when the machine is in idle, this would trigger one of the 4 random composition algorithms to commence with its accompanying light show.
4 One Minute Pieces
[audio:mmm01.mp3,mmm02.mp3,mmm03.mp3,mmm04.mp3|titles=Magic Minute Machine 01,Magic Minute Machine 02,Magic Minute Machine 03,Magic Minute Machine 04 |artists=Marc Chia,Marc Chia,Marc Chia,Marc Chia]
